History Podcasts
The History Hit network gives you access to a growing range of podcasts presented by and featuring historians at the forefront of research and debate.
Scroll down to listen to the most recent episodes from our network.
Dan Snow’s History Hit explores the deep history behind today’s headlines – giving you the context to understand what is going on today. Everything has a history, every challenge made easier by understanding its nature, its genesis. In a world of fast opinions, we put historians into the debate, women and men who bring real knowledge built over careers spent researching.
The Ancients, hosted by historian Tristan Hughes, is dedicated to discussing our distant past. Historians and archaeologists join Tristan to discuss specific themes from antiquity, from Neolithic Britain to the Fall of Rome.
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb presents Not Just the Tudors. Together with expert interviewees, she covers the sweeping range of the early modern period: everything from the Aztecs to witches, Velázquez to Shakespeare, Mughal India to the Mayflower.
Gone Medieval is hosted by historians Matt Lewis and Eleanor Janega, who shine a light on one of the most fascinating yet misunderstood periods of history: the Middle Ages. In each episode, experts lead listeners beneath the skin of captivating stories to uncover new insights.
In Betwixt the Sheets join historian, Kate Lister as she unashamedly roots around the topics which seem to have been skipped in history class. Everything from landmark LGBTQ+ court cases, to political scandal, to downright bizarre medieval cures for impotence.
In American History Hit, join Don Wildman twice a week for your hit of American history, as he explores the past to help us understand the United States of today. We’ll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway, visit Chief Powhatan as he prepares for war with the British, see Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists, and uncover the dark history that lies beneath Central Park.
After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal joined History Hit’s award-winning podcast network in October 2023, hosted by actor, writer and historian Anthony Delaney and writer, broadcaster, historian Maddy Pelling. Together, the duo unpick history’s spookiest, strangest and most sinister stories – from the disappearance of HMS Terror to the origins of Halloween.
War historian and broadcaster James Rogers hosts our Warfare podcast, which opens up fascinating new perspectives on how conflict has shaped and changed our world. James teams up with fellow historians, veterans, and experts to reveal astonishing new histories of inspirational leadership, breakthrough technologies, and era defining battles.
Patented, hosted by Dallas Campbell, dives into stories of flukey discoveries, erased individuals and murky marketing ploys with the help of experts, scientists and historians.
Click on any of the listings below to listen to the most recent episodes from our network.
All Podcasts
41:24
The Medieval Bishop's Sex Workers
5 July 2022Outside Medieval London’s city walls, Southwark was a land without rules. It was the place where people went to partake in theatre, watch bear...
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39:40
The Life of Malcolm X
4 July 2022Born Malcolm Little in 1925, Malcolm X would become human rights activist— a prominent African American minister and figure during the civil...
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47:36
Surviving Plague in Florence
4 July 2022Between 1630 and 1631, the city of Florence suffered its last epidemic of plague. Some 12% of the city's population of 75,000 perished.
In...
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41:23
The Life of Anne Frank
4 July 2022It's exactly 80 years since Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Perhaps the most well-known Jewish victim of...
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32:53
The Real Alexander Hamilton
3 July 2022How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence impoverished...
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35:11
Video Games
3 July 2022A whistle stop tour of the 50 year history of video games — and all the innovations along the way, from our TV sets to virtual...
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51:01
Prehistoric Rock Art of Atlantic Europe
3 July 2022Dozens of incredible examples of prehistoric rock art have been found across western Europe in recent decades - but what do they...
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31:37
The Medieval Origins of Fairy Tales
2 July 2022When we think of fairy tales, we think of imprisoned maidens, turreted towers, magic spinning wheels, wicked witches and demonic dwarves and...
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37:34
The Korean War: A Forgotten Conflict?
1 July 2022Millions dead. A higher proportion of civilian casualties than in World War Two. America, Britain, Russia & China all involved in a conflict...
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34:37
The First Queer Activist
1 July 2022On 29 August 1867, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs stood in front of the Congress of German Jurists in Munich and urged them not to extend sodomy laws...
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43:26
Viking Voyages and Legends
30 June 2022In the dying days of the eighth century, the Vikings erupted onto the international stage with brutal raids and slaughter. The medieval Norsemen...
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41:45
Elizabeth I: Last Days and Legacy
30 June 2022In the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign, many of the preoccupations of earlier decades had been abated. Mary, Queen of Scots had finally been...
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46:06
Growing your Own Drugs with James Wong
30 June 2022Did you know around 50% of all medicinal drugs are derived from plants?
James Wong is a gardener, ethnobotanist, broadcaster and proud owner...
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42:24
Sparta and the Nazis
30 June 2022Ancient Sparta was co-opted by the Nazis as a supposed model civilisation for the Third Reich’s twisted racial and martial...
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1:04:53
The Death of Alexander the Great Explained
29 June 2022Alexander the Great’s untimely death at Babylon in 323 BC triggered an unprecedented crisis across his continent-spanning empire.
Within a...
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23:41
Drone Delivery
29 June 2022The drones are coming. In twenty years there’s going to be a hundred times more flying planes, taxis, parcels in the airspace than today thanks...
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32:35
The Man Who Escaped Auschwitz
28 June 2022In April 1944 nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate, Fred Wetzler broke out of Auschwitz. Under electrified fences and past armed...
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25:19
Anglo-Saxons at Prayer: Brixworth Church
28 June 2022All Saints’ Church in the village of Brixworth, Northamptonshire is one of the oldest, largest and most complete Anglo-Saxon churches in...
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45:31
Beer
28 June 2022Pint, bottle, schooner, tinny … no matter how you drink it, beer is undeniably a part of social life here in Britain and around the...
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32:36
The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
27 June 2022Europe in 1914 was a tinderbox of imperial tensions and the spark that would light the conflagration would be the assassination of Archduke Franz...
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42:35
Was Queenship the Same Around the World?
27 June 2022All this month on Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb has been talking to her guests about Queenship. But the focus has...
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